The First Sunday After Christmas
December 29-30, 2007
Isaiah 61:10-62:3; John 1:1-18
Hillary T. West
Author, teacher and Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor, preached a series in 1997 entitled, When God is Silent. Taylor reminds us in the series of our great need to constantly receive information; to always be in communication. There was a time, she recollects, when cell phones were only connected to a privileged few, the President, certain dignitaries, doctors on call. Now, of course, we’re all connected, 24 hours a day.
We’re addicted to the rings and pulses that come across our phones and blackberries, giving us urgent, much needed information, any time, any place. We’ve become tolerant of listening to other’s life episodes as they share in phone conversations either in line at the grocery store, in an elevator, or wherever. In fact, we’re so conditioned to the hum hum of noise pulsing through our lives, I wonder how capable we are of choosing silence. And, when we do, do we find silence difficult to manage?
The truth is, we don’t live in silence very often. Even at night when the world is asleep, listen to all the noise around us. Cars driving by, refrigerator motors running, heat and cooling systems pumping just the right temperature. I love the sound of no sound that comes when we loose our electricity. The silence is refreshingly penetrating.
Silence can be disconcerting though. Silence can be that time when we have to listen to those voices within us that cry out for love and understanding. Silence can also be our emptiness and fear when we believe God has faded away. So, we make noise. We talk, and express, and squirm and shuffle and fidget and bang around. We make ourselves known. Thank God for our noises, because this is exactly how God makes himself known.
Over these past days we’ve heard a lot about Mary and Joseph and the birth of our savior, the baby Jesus. Christmas is here. And, from Christmas day until Epiphany on January 6, we celebrate Christmas. So, we continue to sing Christmas music and give thanks for how God came as one of us, as Jesus Christ, to save us. In Luke’s gospel and in Matthew’s, the stories are noisy. Mary and Joseph have conversations with angels about the birth of the savior. Angels come in huge bunches to yell out the good news about Jesus’ birth. Shepherds can’t keep their mouths shut spreading the good news. Wise men led by a star to see the infant king, are filled with delight, and my guess is, cry out, when they discover the tiny Christ child. Even in the gospel of John, the prologue we heard today, we’re presented with a noisy, action packed story of Jesus’ coming.
We start with, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” We don’t start with, “in the beginning was silence and stillness.” Jesus makes himself known. John’s prologue harkens back to God in creation, “In the beginning God created”. God’s busy, causing, instructing and identifying. God’s a chatter box. God says, “let their be light…let there be a vault…let the waters under heaven come together…let the earth produce vegetation…let their be many lights…let there be living creatures…let their be humankind”. And, God says, “it is good” and blesses creation. Noisy, busy, action packed is our God, fully immersed and fully engaged with his creation. That’s how it is with Jesus. Only, in the gospel of John, we’re given a picture of Jesus, far more connected. Jesus is with God in the very beginning – not the Christ child’s beginning, not our beginning – but in the beginning of God’s beginning. Jesus is never not connecting with God or with God’s creation. Jesus plays a part from the very existence of existence. And John’s gospel calls that, “the Word”.
In an effort to wrap their arms around how God “is”, early Judaic thinking and then Christian thinking developed the biblical concept of “the Word.” Word means so much more than just some letters strung together. Early Jews understood each “word” to be action-packed. Words build courage. They energize people into making things happen. Hebrew is a language of just 10,000 words, all flying around with a power much more than just a sound. Consequently, in Hebrew, words are alive. In fact, when Jews referred to God by name, they found that to be much too personal and disrespectful of God. So, scripture tell us that the title, Word of God was substituted for God’s name.
New Testament writings are largely in Greek. The Greek for Word, is Logos. Logos is not just the Word of God. Logos is also the reason of God, the mind of God, coupled with the power of God’s very energy and love. This Logos, creates and forms order out of chaos, brings truth and results in wisdom. This Word, this Logos, is made flesh in Jesus Christ and is known to God, is with God, in all of eternity, before time and with time, and in time, bringing us life. In Holy Communion we call this, anemnesis, the very life of Christ within us through the bread and the cup, then, now and when. Life in Christ. Not death, not existence, not simply sustaining, but life. Life of forgiveness, of gratitude, of joy, of love. Life where being lost in the darkness no longer dominates. No more groping around in doubt and fear. Rather, life in Jesus Christ is the power of God’s redeeming love crashing through, saving us. In this life of light, God comes to be personally involved in us. So, in the Christmas story we hear from the writer of John, we get a little bit different rendition of how the savior comes. The writer reminds us that receiving God in Christ is active and noisy, and we are made children of God; a perfect metaphor, because that is how we know children, active and noisy.
Thank God for the blessed sounds and actions of children, and how, in Christmas, they teach us of God’s love for us.
Just before Christmas dozens of precious Christ Church children came prancing around the worship space donning white towels suddenly made perfect as sheep; others dressed as twinkling stars floating about; several convinced us all that they were cows at the stable where Jesus was born and even more came soaring down the aisle as snow white angels announcing the birth of the Christ Child, all singing at the top of their voices, the good news that Jesus Christ is born.
It God for how God comes to us wordy, and noisy and fully immersed into our lives, smothering the darkness with his light spreading his grace and truth. We remember each Christmas of this precious gift. The reason and wisdom of God becomes human so that we can know the very character of God. He dwells among us. “Dwells among us” translates as God actually pitching his tent in our camp and hanging around with us, loving us. As Jesus, he teaches us what it means to live in the glory of God. We delight in how God clothes us in garments of salvation and wraps us in the cloaks of righteousness, as the prophet Isaiah tells us. He comes and calls us his own, and reminds us that, clothed in Christ, we will be called a new name.
Several years ago some young families were present for a baptism preparation. The children had gathered. They were playing with blocks and moving around happily chattering away and enjoying the freedom of the near empty worship space. At one point we talked about, how because of Jesus, God’s grace is given to us freely, unearned. In an effort to help the word, “grace” have more meaning and the action of “baptism” sink in, we talked about how through God’s grace we are renamed. God calls us his own. The word is Christian. At the end of class, one young man, then 4 years old, came up to me. Clearly, he was worried. “Hillary, I need to ask you a question,” he stated. “Sure, Trevor. What is it?” It’s about getting a new name. I’m not sure that’s going to work. “Why not,” I asked?
“Because, my mom knows me as Trevor and I’m not sure she’ll know me as Christian.” Recognizing that in Jesus his life is changed, in the end we agreed that Trevor would do well with both names, Trevor and Christian.
Sometimes words are just not enough. When we love someone, we think of ways over and over again to tell them and to show them. This is God’s intent. So, the Word became flesh. Jesus didn’t just say I love you. His very words became actions. Jesus calls others to follow him in his name. He speaks healing words to the royal official. He commands a lame man to stand and walk. He takes and blesses and gives food for just a few to thousands. He commands rough waters to be calm so that we will not be afraid. He teaches forgiveness to those in the know. He makes the whole loving thing just about as noisy as it can be. Even on the cross, in his agony, he blurts out his last words, “it is finished”, only to be raised from the dead and to say, “peace be with you.”
This Christmas we received a card that said something like, “peace…does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still” know the presence of Jesus in our hearts.
This is noisy business, this Jesus in our lives. He calls us into his life. We are given the gift of becoming inheritors of the Word. So, out we go, into the world, speaking that same language Jesus speaks. Language of light, and hope and love. For Jesus, we keep the Word alive in what we say and in what we do. And, lots of the time, it’s just going to be noisy. And, it may well be the face of anger, or frustration, or selfishness, or possibly coupled with encouragement, or the sound of purpose and joy. But, we can know for certain that Christmas comes and brings to us the Word, made flesh, living in us… Joy to the World! The Lord is come!
